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Alexis Price Instructor: Malcolm Campbell English 1102 10 February, 2014 The Cycle of Criminality Prison. A simple word with a strong, demeaning connotation. When thinking of a prison facility and its purposes, one typically thinks of the three main functions it serves. SarahMuCucloch.com states that prisons were created to punish the prisoner, to protect the public, and to rehabilitate the offender to prevent them from committing another crime. In most cases, these functions are not carried out in the right way. They are fulfilled but in a way that ends up hurting society even more and continuing what is called a prison system cycle. Picture this scenario: A young man is released from prison after a year-long drug related sentence. His first thought is, What do I do now? He has no money, no job and no social standing in the community. He is all alone. Thrown back into society to figure out a life that would be difficult for anyone. Trying and failing to get a job to pay for food and shelter, the man turns back to drug dealing and other illegal activities to earn money in order to survive. Gangs are a major problem in prisons right now and are showing no signs of getting corrected. Depending on where the convict grew up, how his or her life environment was, and other factors, upon entering prison they might already be in a gang. If so, when they arrive they find their people and join that gang in prison. Most prisons have four or five main gangs and most of the gangs are broken up based off of color. Some examples of gangs from Listverses Top Ten Prison Gangs article are the Neta, a Hispanic gang, the 451 Kumi, a black gang, and

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the Dead Man Inc, a white gang. If one enters prison without previous affiliation with a gang, they have to quickly decide whether or not they want to get involved in the tricky business of gangs. Gangs are a quick way for inmates to gain more prison time or get involved in activities that they werent previously involved in before being incarcerated. Drug dealing, plotting for revenge, and working with members outside of the facility in the real world all happen inside prisons every day. These activities, if caught participating in them, gets a prisoner more jail time. This also teaches previously non-affiliated members how to be a gangster. When the inmate is finally released from prison, they have a whole new lifestyle to partake in, a life of trapping and drug dealing that they learned or continued to participate in while in prison. We, as Americans who have not been in the system, say that prisons are for reforming when in reality they are causing more destruction and are just temporarily getting one bad guy off the street while many more are being made. Another way prisons are not helping the reform process of prisoners is giving them a public, life-long record of their incarceration. When one goes in for a job interview, the question, have you ever been incarcerated for any crime? is always asked. If the individual has been previously convicted, not many employers want to hire them. This causes the prison cycle to continue. The world revolves around money, without it, its impossible to make a good life for oneself and ones family. The public record keeps released prisoners from having a job, making money, and taking care of their family. This is when they turn to drug dealing and other illegal jobs to get money. If they cant get money legally, they will obtain it illegally. When they get caught in their illegal acts they are sent back to prison and the cycle will continue.

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Out of an estimated 1,571,013 prisoners in the US prison system, eight out of every ten of the released prisoners will go on to commit crimes again says CrimeinAmerica.net. The main reason for the relapse in bad behavior by these people is that they were never reformed while doing their time. The prison system, if anything, motivates the prisoners to be more violent and cause more issues. Most inmates have some sort of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, or something worse. Also, most of the inmates have had rough backgrounds and hard lives. When a bad past is mixed with a bad present, the future will continue to be bad for these individuals. The prison system motivates evil behavior by dehumanizing and deindividualizing inmates, essentially taking away one's need of belonging and safety says Robert Joseph Sirvird, a writer for the Applied Social Psychology website. Exercising power against others in a deliberately physically, mentally, or morally harming manner can cause even more damage to the inmates than they have already endured in their lives and in no way helps to rehabilitate them. SarahMucCulloch.com ends their essay on prison systems with this statement, Perhaps prisons work to give us a sense of satisfaction that something has been done but do prisons work to create a safer, more secure society that protects its citizens, prevents crime, and rehabilitates those citizens who find themselves on the wrong side of the law? The evidence would suggest that as a society we have got our definition very wrong. If we, as a society, want crime rates to go down and for the world, in general, to be a better place, we need to reform the prison systems. If a person is convicted for ten years, the time and money that are put in for them to be there should be spent on teaching them better ways to act in society and helping them find a job for when they are released or mending issues with family members. If an eighteen year old is thrown in prison for theft and drugs, they should be worked with.

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Prisons not only cause individuals to commit crime again but also raise their need for violence and give them gang affiliation which causes racism. The current prison system results with
thousands of inmates being released into the world with a newly found predator mentality and a strong sense of racist hate. Robert Joseph Sirvid leaves us with, It is obvious the prison system needs

improvement not to simply stop violence in prison, but to allow prisoners a successful rehabilitation and reintegration into free society. The prison systems must be changed if we want society to become better and safer in the future.

Price 5 Works Cited Gudrais, Elizabeth. "The Prison Problem." Harvard Magazine. Harvard Magazine Inc., n.d. Web. 12 Mar 2014. <http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/03/the-prison-problem>. Mauer, Mark. "Thinking About Prison and its Impact in the Twenty-First Century." Thinking About Prison and its Impact. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Web. 12 Mar 2014. <http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_osu_reckless.pdf>. Sirvid, Robert Joseph. "Prison's Evil System." Applied Social Psychology. Applied Social Psychology, 03 Mar 2012. Web. 12 Mar 2014. "Why Promote Prison Reform?." UNODC. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Web. 12 Mar 2014. <http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and- prison-reform/prison-reform-and-alternativesto-imprisonment.html>.